Life and Trust, by Emursive, is currently running at 20 Exchange Place.
At the beginning of last year, Contagious—a company that “helps agencies and brands supercharge their marketing” and “believes that creativity kicks the living crap out of non-creative work when it comes to selling stuff”—published a piece proclaiming that “‘eat the rich’ will be the dominant creative narrative of 2023.” What read like a standard-issue trend piece in the era of Succession (2018–23), Parasite (2019), Triangle of Sadness (2022), and The Menu (2022) was actually a guide to capitalizing on a booming anticapitalist macronarrative. Author Tom Beckman, global chief creative officer of the marketing communications firm Weber Shandwick, urged brands in the direction of “a post-bourgeoisie playbook for the 99 percent [and] an entirely new and very gritty brand voice we haven’t seen before.” In an era defined by soaring inequality and diminishing social mobility, “people and brands,” Beckman declared, “will celebrate social realism.”
A fun-house take on a social re…